London’s grooming gang crisis continues to expose institutional crises, political denial, and the persistent failure to protect vulnerable children.
Operation Grandbye in east London began in 2017 after four girls, aged 13 to 15, reported being raped near Stratford Centre. Police later identified 18 victims, mostly teenagers. Despite early arrests, the investigation fizzled out. The last update in 2018 claimed “disruption of perpetrators,” yet no convictions followed. Freedom of Information requests about outcomes remain unanswered.
The same pattern repeats across London: victims dismissed, agencies disjointed, perpetrators unpunished.
“These children are being abandoned,” said care advocate Chris Wild. “The care system is at the precipice of collapsing.”
More than 9,000 London children went missing in 2023, linked to over 27,000 incidents. Reports of child sexual exploitation have risen 15% this year. Yet political leadership appears uninterested. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, outright dismissed the issue as less significant than drug dealing and refused to admit these grooming gangs even exist.
At the national level, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is accused of doing the same—minimizing and deflecting. He only reluctantly commissioned a national grooming gang inquiry in June, after previously accusing supporters of such a probe of jumping on a “far-right bandwagon.” Now, that inquiry itself is collapsing.
Two victims, Fiona Goddard and Ellie Reynolds, resigned from a liaison panel this week, saying they were being “silenced” and that officials were pushing to downplay the background of predominantly Pakistani heritage perpetrators. Goddard said the inquiry’s scope was being expanded to “muddy the waters,” creating “a real fear” that victims would again be “forgotten.” Reynolds said victims were “kept in the dark from the beginning.”
The fallout has been severe. After the resignations, the government refused to confirm whether any victims remained on the inquiry’s advice panel, strongly suggesting none do. At the same time, social worker Annie Hudson, once tipped to chair the inquiry, withdrew on Tuesday, reportedly due to “recent media coverage.”
Rather than acknowledge the implosion, ministers have chosen to attack the whistleblowers. Home Office Minister Jess Phillips dismissed the victims’ claims, calling allegations of delay, dilution, or cover-up “false” and accusing them of spreading “misinformation.”
That prompted Goddard to call for Phillips’s resignation. “Today she publicly called me a liar to the whole nation when she knew I wasn’t lying,” Goddard said. “I’m a grooming gang survivor who has been called a liar her whole life by public services and councils to try and cover up the horrendous abuse they let happen to me as a child. She has now just done the same as they did to me for years, all to save her own skin.”
Other officials have closed ranks behind Phillips, insisting the inquiry remains “a huge priority for the government.” But critics, including former detective Maggie Oliver, say the process already mirrors past cover-ups. “It really is another attempt to water down what this national inquiry should be,” Oliver said. “They’re trying to expand it to all forms of abuse so they can pretend this kind of offending is not still going on.”
Meanwhile, the Met insists it is “utterly committed to protecting vulnerable children.” But with thousands still at risk and a national inquiry now in freefall, survivors see little progress, only repetition.
“Nothing has changed,” Wild said. “In fact, it’s got worse.”
